The present invention refers to a system to control and extinguish fires in large size tanks that store flammable products, such as hydrocarbons.
The system is based on the tank containing the flammable product also containing either a floating or a submerged extinguisher device that is activated at the moment when a fire breaks out in the tank.
The system is particularly applicable to refineries and all types of hydrocarbons plants having tanks of up to 70 m diameter containing flammable products, and is intended to extinguish a fire that occurs in the tanks themselves or in spills that sometimes occur in refineries and hydrocarbon plants.
As is known, refineries and hydrocarbon plants have small, medium and large capacity tanks that contain flammable products that are difficult or practically impossible to extinguish when a fire occurs.
Obviously, although numerous systems exist to extinguish fires, in all cases they are intended to be applied to large fires where people are involved who are obliged to distribute the fire-retardant product, either in the form of powder, gas or liquid, over dangerous areas.
Taking account of this, the inventor herein attempted to solve the problem of extinguishing forest fires and obtained patents disclosing a device for fire extinguishing, including Spanish Patent No. P-9700590, which describes a device to extinguish fires from a distance. That patent discloses a large container holding the fire-extinguisher product in the form of powder, gas or liquid, and immersed in the container is an extinguisher intended to explode on contact with the fire when heat is detected. This frees the extinguisher product contained in the extinguisher, and simultaneously extends the product contained in the external container.
Furthermore, the device can be activated directly or at a distance, or by detection of the heat caused by a fire.
The device in Spanish Patent No. P-9700590 is intended for extinguishing large fires, but is not intended to put out fires that originate in large tanks containing flammable products, such as those found in hydrocarbons refineries and similar.